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MASSIVE population drop in last 2 weeks!
Dromedarr
Member Posts: 76
According to http://www.torstatus.net/ the population's been pretty steady since February (after initial decline) up to mid May. But look at the graph there! Both US and EU servers went to zero in about last 2 weeks! What a massive drop.
US and EU graphs (highlighted)
i know it's not representation of subscriptions, but it's kinda alarming at this point. Not many people are logging in to the game.
what do you think? Diablo 3?
At this point the server population status is irrelevant, cos about 98% is LIGHT all the time. This is getting out of hand and transfers won't be active till July. And that's optimistic prediction. How much more could the community take on low pop servers to stay in this sinking ship?
The subs could easily go under 500k in no time. and 500k is minimum for EA to be profitable in long run. And we all know how EA can kill an MMO in a week - APB, I'm loooking at you.
This might be one big fiasco.
Comments
There is a dip because of Diablo III and Tera. Whenever a new game comes out the populations always dip. They need their server merge ASAP though regardless of who left to play their initial 30 days of gamplay. I still love the game. Looking forward to seeing what is coming through out the year.
^^ always an excuse.
That's hardly a little dip. The population (active) has been extremely steady for months and now this in 2 weeks. That's on the edge of recoverability.
Diablo 3
_________________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
- John Wooden
well, Diablo is not really the same player type as SWTOR. some of them perhaps. but in May we had betas from Tera, TSW and GW2. people simply let run out their subscription due to these new upcoming games.
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
I have certainly not logged in for a while as I'm too busy killing Diablo and its minions.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
You're probably right Usul, but it did apply to me and all of my friends... and I see D3 mentioned quite a bit on the boards as an alternative to guilds leaving SWTOR..
Funny how people touted SWTOR as the WoW killer... never knowing that D3 would end up being the SWTOR killer. Yes I'm taking some liberties and slight exaggerations here, but hey, I'm having fun doing it!
_________________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
- John Wooden
By the end of the summer i predict the game will have around 5 NA and 5 EU servers that will peak at heavy most of the time due to the transfers and such, with all the other's being probably shut down. That still will pretty much keep subs around 200k to 400k, in which it will be kept alive or given a quick death by EA. Anyway you look at it, TOR, for how much it cost to make and all other things involved is one major disappointment that once again leaves mmo fans that are huge SW fans left with nothing.
We need an up and down forum topic vote system here. Don't get me wrong, I don't like TOR at all, had no intentions of playing it. But I am sure the people who actually like the game are tired of population drop posts. It would be better if there was ONE population Topic instead of the 3 to 4 that seem to pop up every week. Its the same way on the GW2 forums with those stupid hype threads. It's also hard for poeple the remark on previous threads that are old and then get accused of ressurecting a dead thread after being told to not make duplicate topics.
Dont you think musicmann that the lessons have finally been learned? With the massive failure that is SWTOR, I think the rush to jump into the MMO genre is over for developers. The industry, the competition, and most importantly (we the gamers) have changed significantly... What we desire at launch as far as a polished, finished product WITH new and innovative features which set it apart from others is now expected. The issue of subscriber rentention (I believe) is now paramount... it's no longer how do we get people to buy this game, it's becoming more about how do we KEEP people playing this game. What we expected in 2004, is NOT what we expect in 2012.
Developers have made enough WoW clones... that magic isn't repeatable in the present day.
I sincerely hope the lessons of all of these failures are finally sinking in and we have less people losing their jobs after launch.
_________________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
- John Wooden
If we've learned anything, it's that they have not learned. I saw it with FFXIV and now TOR, my 2 most anticipated MMO's. When you have games made by suits that don't actually play MMO's, somehow they always seem to think they know better than players that are involved on a day to day basis.
It may not be too late for FF XIV to do their swansong. Would be awesome if their 2.0 could turn around such a failed launch into something positive.
Why does this make me want to buy it?
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
They already botched that one up too ! by nothing having the 2.0 launch / trailer video ready for E3 !
So even SE can't do it right anymore.
don't do it!! Take that 50 bucks and go buy a homeless guy some booze, or put the 50 dollar bill in front of your tire and burn out on it. It's a better use of the money.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I'm still subbed to this, heck I still like it; I don't have Diablo III, don't have Tera, yet I haven't logged into SWTOR for over a week, I just keep finding better things to do with my time... even slow buggers like me hit the wall of 'bored now' sometime.
yeah, i'm also still subbed till august, but I've not been in the game for 3 weeks now and not planning to return. The whole endgame is just 4 bosses on hard in operation once a week. Other than that? 4 warzones with waiting timer over 30 mins. That's pathetic. Not even chat bubbles to do some cool RP.
the important thing to look at is the overall population drop of Overall Change -8.77% this past month.
When I quit in Febuary I quit due to the game was shallow, boring, and uninspired with nothing to do but roll alts, declining subs was a factor , but mainly quit due to the game just sucks. I'm going to have a nice laugh if TOR shuts down before SWG did , which at this rate under EA it will die before it reaches 8 yrs.
There no way I'm coming back, even if time was given to me free there is nothing worth coming back to .
Subbed but bareley logged in due to great weather either been out cycling or enjoying the sun with the family now away on holiday tomorrow morning so no login for at least the next 2 weeks.
Its called a failure cascade.
Its the point where people who actually like the game a) drop sub, b) stop logging in; because they don't find enough people to play with. If you ever played a unpopular MMO on a dying server you know what i mean. Theoretically its a process that accelerates itself even further right down to some critical mass of players(the core, the ones who don't care and play it as a solo game or in very tight organized guilds).
Sadly there isn't much that you can do against that besides server merges. Even updates and fixes won't help since they won't bring back that critical mass to servers. People will come back infrequently to their old servers, find empty guilds and friendlists, twiddle some with the changes, like them, and unsub because they are unwilling to reroll on a populated server(or reroll, and thus help keeping that server unattractive and thus dead).
I have to wonder what the real subscription numbers are now. There is no way its 1.3 mill any more. I know ea has said it needs to maintain 500k. I wonder how close they are to that magic number.
I don't feel bad for ea, this is what you get when you over hype a game then under deliver. It has so many problems you would think they would pull the plug.
Diablo 3.
only gonna get worse for them - TSW to pull the PVErs, then later in the year GW2 to take just about all the PVPrs
Developers still haven't learned. The Elder Scrolls Online will fail just as hard as Swtor did.